Does source memory impairment associated with emotionally arousing stimuli occur at encoding or retrieval?

• Published in: Journal of cognitive psychology (Hove, England) Vol. 24; no. 7; pp. 796 - 801
• Main Authors: Otani, Hajime, Jaffa, Melvyn, Libkuman, Terry M., Goernert, Phillip N., Kato, Koichi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hove Taylor & Francis Group 01.11.2012; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Cognitive ability; Emotionally enhanced memory; Emotions; Memory; Misattribution errors; Source memory
• ISSN: 2044-5911; 2044-592X
• DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2012.693468

The present experiment investigated whether negatively arousing stimuli produce source memory impairment and whether the impairment occurs at encoding or retrieval. Participants were presented with negatively arousing, positively arousing, and neutral pictures. Each picture was followed by an instructional slide that indicated whether the picture was an Apple-kind or an Orange-kind. Item memory was assessed by free recall and source memory was assessed by asking participants to classify the recalled pictures into the two kinds of pictures. The results indicated that item memory was greater for the negatively arousing pictures than for the positively arousing and the neutral pictures. However, the negatively arousing pictures produced more misattribution errors than the neutral pictures, replicating source memory impairment. It was concluded that source memory impairment associated with negatively arousing stimuli occurs at encoding.